


My Tongue Bit In Your Teeth

by onyourchest



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-25 02:16:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20368999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onyourchest/pseuds/onyourchest
Summary: There’s a joke in there somewhere. Just like the long-lost irony of another Catra in another life — dying in the arms of her love without being able to remember their face — that she knows she was living barely three seconds ago.Catra takes a seat at the bar.





	My Tongue Bit In Your Teeth

It’s almost fitting, really, just how much dying hurts. That even death refuses to give Catra a break. She’s managed distracting herself for this long with just sitting hunched over on the edge of a cliff, legs dangling uselessly off the edge as the morning mist, and the droplets of dew, and the slow building sunrise keep her company. The newest battlefield of the war is far enough away by now that she can’t still see any evidence of its existence. Can’t hear anything, either. Her efforts in chasing down _the hero_ might have dragged her slightly off course.

Story of the whole war, really. Years, and years — entire decades given to the Horde — and Catra can barely still remember where or why it started.

But, in the end, apparently even this, even _the end,_ feels compelled to sneak in one more sucker punch. Even this has to hurt. One more final battle, one last decisive fight to throw on the pile of hundreds more, and she had to go and screw it up.

Catra sniffs, blood through broken sinuses, broken bone, broken everything, everything, everything, before it all comes pouring back out in a single wet cough thanks to the open wound at her ribs. The rays of morning light paint red-stained grass with soft, soft neon. Pink and blue. Purple, and orange, and gold. How fitting that she only takes notice of a detail so mundane _now._ She never would have before. No time, no space, no reason to relax. No desire to stop in the first place.

How fitting. How completely and thoroughly fitting that her enemy, her one and only friend, turned her into a sap.

She pulls a hand momentarily away from her side, looks down to check the damage. A steady stream of blood pours out in rhythm with her heart, in response to the loss of pressure, and, yeah, still dying. She puts her hand back into place.

If only she could remember her friend’s name. She would find some way to curse her for this. Or thank her for this.

One of those.

Catra chokes out a laugh at the thought of her — the friend — seeing her like this. All moony-eyed, out of focus adoration and worry, fear, and concern, and tear-soaked eyes, _why didn__’t you just come with me, _when they both knew already the answer was _because I didn__’t want to go, because I wanted you to stay. _Wouldn’t that be a sight. Worthless, useless regret totally unable to stop the steady march of time because all the heroism and villainy in the world won’t build you a rewind button.

If only.

If only.

Catra barely still recognizes the blurred, out of focus memories of her face.

“Hey,” she husks, gravel, and rubble, and stone. A hand comes to rest between her shoulder blades so faint and so cold it may as well belong to a ghost. So faintly it may as well be Catra’s nerves rebelling against her desire to drown these last few moments alive in misery. Convince herself she isn’t alone. “Hey. Adora.”

_Adora._ Is that her name? It feels right. Maybe. Too hard to think. Harder to know.

Her company — the ghost or whatever they are — slides their hand down, presses their palm firm to the small of Catra’s back. “I’m here,” they say, and the calming melody of their voice sets what little blood Catra has managed to so stubbornly keep inside of her body to singing. “I’m here. Always.”

There’s irony in that, Catra knows. Even if she still can’t quite remember the hows or the whys. Something to do with someone she used to be close with. Something to do with her friend. Something they did to her? Something she did to them? It’s ironic how little and much she remembers at the very same time. Maybe the only thing that matters is that she can still recognize the feeling.

Catra tries to smile. “About time. Was starting to think I’d have to do this alone.”

The body at her side, her companion in these last few minutes of life, smiles too. They tuck the expression away against the dip of Catra’s throat, and oh, oh, _oh, _it feels familiar in a way she wishes she still had the mind to place. Their lips feel cold. Too cold. Catra’s thoughts slip back to the sky before she solves either mystery. She’s never — as far as her slowly oxygen starving brain knows anyway — taken the time to really _see_ a sunrise before. Day and night on this side of the world, sure. Dawn and dusk. That and whatever goes on with the skies in that always cliched, perpetually dark and stormy nightmare of a place she calls home, but never this. Somehow, never this.

It should probably feel more meaningful.

“I’m sorry.” That voice again. It sounds too much like her friend. “I can’t even say I wanted to protect you.”

Catra rubs her lips together hard enough for her teeth to break skin, nerves already gone enough to leave her too numb to feel and too numb to hurt. She can barely still move her legs. “Well. I got this far without your protection, anyway.”

The voice goes silent at that, leaving Catra alone with the sun and the nothing. The colors are fading now, only a blue well on its way to white still shining through the sky. She’s never really been one for reflection. Never really gave death much thought at all. But, now she’s alone with it, and newly realized sap that she is, reflection is starting to sound like a nice way to go. She can be the cliche she was raised to be, look back on what fragments of her life she still remembers, and no one will ever get to know but her. One last secret.

Or, well, she could have. She could have before the voice came back. Before the head tucked into her shoulder shifted and turned, and suddenly cold, cold lips were pressed against the dying pulse in her throat.

Catra swallows. Her nerves flare back to life at the contact, and again at the sound and the feel and the ice of the voice.

“Catra. Catra your hair’s all prickly. You gotta brush more,” it says, slurs, sounding every bit as gone as Catra herself.

Wouldn’t that be a sight. Two friends, two enemies, two loves too stubborn to call it love, dying in each other’s arms because they were too stupid and stubborn to remember how to stop.

“No.”

“_Greasy. _Your shoulder is like, the worst pillow on the planet, by the way.”

If Catra smiles at that, if her mind finally puts two and two together and the reality of who the voice belongs to finally sinks all the way in, she doesn’t feel it. She doesn’t think it. She barely even registers her mouth opening, throat working, lungs burning as she answers with, “Apologies, princess. I’ll be sure to call room service to fluff it for you.”

A small huff of air brushes across her throat. Catra feels the pressure of hair rising, standing on end in answer, but nothing else that might matter. Nothing else that might make the sensation feel like something real. Her body is hardly still alive enough to matter.

“I’ll have you know,” the voice goes on, and maybe that sensation doesn’t matter so much anymore, and maybe Catra’s mind has started its final fade because she feels it, this time: that the voice sounds so, so much like her friend. _Adora._ “I’m one more mistake away from checking out of this hotel for good.”

There’s irony in that. Catra still feels enough to be sure. Still understands enough to finally know that the voice belongs to her dear, close friend. Her dear, close enemy. But maybe that’s the point. The irony. Maybe that’s the point, that her friend was there at the start, and here at the end, and maybe the middle parts don’t matter so much when the now looks like this. Like them.

“Etheria is going to miss you, Catra,” Adora says, and god if it doesn’t feel like a starter pistol signaling the beginning of her end. For all their leaving, and going, and _I__’ll get you next time_, they’ve never done this; the whole tragic goodbye, end of the line with no coming back sort of speech.

Catra’s not about to start now.

She snorts something bitter, chokes and spits out the blood in her mouth like she didn’t already forget her nose is broken to pieces. “Right,” she laughs. “Like I didn’t spent years trying to break it.”

Adora suddenly stills, takes another moment before answering. It’s understandable — denial is maybe a little too far when she's only trying to help — but also, Catra’s pretty sure she’s still dying, and a little bit of hurrying sounds more than fair.

“Well, _I__’ll_ miss you.”

And Catra laughs again at that. Quieter. Genuine. She knows Adora means it. She can feel it in the way her breath is growing slower and slower, so empty of life that it barely still mists against the chill of the morning air.

A pause of her own, and Catra breathes in, out, and, “Just make sure you don’t come following too quickly. I might start to believe you.”

She closes her eyes. Breathes in. Out.

One last chuckle.

“What are you ever gonna do without me, Adora?” It still doesn’t feel right to turn this moment tragic. Doesn’t feel right to make it seem real. Catra’s body won’t listen anymore. It doesn’t feel right when so much of her is already gone.

A grin — her favorite grin maybe, too hard to tell — drags along her cheek. A pair of fingers brush her hair away, and Catra watches out of the corner of her eyes as Adora presses a kiss to her temple. Lingering too long, her entire presence so quiet. Absent. Something red trickles down Adora’s face. Something Catra can still feel, still recognize as too, too cold. It finds a path over Adora’s lips, and Catra’s eyes, and Catra’s chin, and it drips silently into the grass.

“I _won__’t._”

It’s the last thing Catra hears before the slowly encroaching nothingness bleeding its way up from the tips of her fingers and toes, racing through every last nerve and vein in her body finally reaches her lungs. Her eyes. Her mind. And she falls fully into it. Catra wears the nothing like a blanket until all that there is, is nothing.

Nothing, nothing, nothing at all.

Nothing but nothing.

And then, somehow, there is something.

Grass beneath her feet. A setting sun spilling comfortable autumn warmth through the clouds, over the treetops, and down into the breeze. In the distance, an old doorway with no door in sight. Creaky, too-polished floorboards and wobbly, chipped chairs. A bar with no one inside. A bottle of wine, red enough to be pitch. A relic of another time. One of the better Plumeria vintages from long, long before. Before the war. Before the Horde. Before Adora. Before Catra.

A bottle of wine that shouldn’t exist, and two lonely, empty glasses.

Catra steps inside.

She’s never been here. Barely had the time to be in bars at all when so many of her years with the Horde were focused on _destroying _every city, every town, every building she came across. Only, something about it, something about _here,_ is indescribably, painfully, achingly familiar. Something about the way everything is worn just enough to feel like a second home, the way everything looks new enough to be classy and still rough enough to scratch at a memory in the back of her mind. To feel like the handful Catra bothered to hide out in for no reason beyond that her soldiers were fine, and she was tired, and the owner cared more about giving people a place to relax than the explosions, and the gunfire, and the threat of death hanging just overhead. If the roof caved in, then so be it, at least their customers all had a drink in their hands and a fire in their veins to send them off when it happened. And. Maybe, maybe, maybe Catra knows this sort of place after all.

Scratchy, worn-out music coming from nowhere in particular, leather, stone, and brick, dark lacquered wood, and maybe, maybe, _maybe_ she’s been here before.

There’s a joke in there somewhere. Just like the long-lost irony of another Catra in another life — dying in the arms of her love without being able to remember their face — that she knows she was living barely three seconds ago.

Catra takes a seat at the bar.

She’s half-wearing a tux, something every bit as well-worn as the bar itself, deep magenta and black, a loosely buttoned blouse, untucked with no tie in sight, and she’s never worn this thing before, never bought it or stole it and certainly never _owned_ it, but she knows, somewhere between clawing the cork free from the wine bottle and pouring out half a glass for herself, that it _is_ hers.

She tops off the second glass. For good measure.

And that’s when its owner strolls right through the door, blonde waves cresting over shoulders as she waits, and waits, and waits, dressed in blood red and smiling with bright blue eyes like it’s a sight only for Catra, only ever for her, and like nothing else could even begin to matter now that they have the forever of after the lifetimes they wasted. She’s leaning one bare shoulder against the wall, sundress swirling, twirling down and around her thighs, and Catra almost feels like drowning.

“_Hey, Adora,_” she drawls.

She smiles.

And Adora flexes an arm, smirks and drops her head as she pushes herself off the wall and into a steady stride, all the grace of a dream flowing through her each and every last step.

“Buy me a drink?” Adora asks, smooth as always, smooth as never in that low, slow, silky smooth voice she did, didn’t, couldn’t use around her before. Catra huffs a laugh in answer, swings an arm out toward the chair at her side.

She doesn’t ask why Adora is here, why so soon, why with _her,_ and Adora doesn’t ask where they are. She doesn’t so much as blink, and so Catra doesn’t say _no, no, not you, not here, not yet, not now, _because maybe, actually, none of the details matter. Not anymore. And besides, she’s already pulling out the other chair for Adora like she’s done it a thousand times before, propping up her head in her palm and watching every bit of every motion as Adora drinks slow from her glass and reaches out to let the tangled — still, here, tangled — ends of Catra’s hair fall through the gaps in her fingers.

Adora leans over, leans closer with their loss, stroking rough knuckles up and down the line of Catra’s jaw before she presses soft, wine-soaked kisses along the shape of her cheek. So soft, so gentle that only the ghost of them remains; as if ghosts could ever exist in this place. “Thanks,” she near hums. She sounds completely unburdened by the worries of their lives.

No, not _their_ lives anymore. Someone else’s. Someone else’s war. Someone else’s fight.

They have time, here. This place has gifted them with time, and Adora looks so at peace, so at ease, so _young_ with those years stolen by violence and destruction finally returned. But then, she is. They both are. Too, too young for what they’ve left behind.

“About time. Was starting to wonder what I’d ever do without you.” Catra says around a sip of wine. Maybe just slightly more. It tastes like the names of so many Etherian fruits, and flowers, and fragrances that she never had the chance to learn. Smooth and spice, pepper, and berries, and familiar like a home she never had the chance to have. She refills Adora’s glass first, and then her own, never once breaking eye contact as she moves.

Adora hums, grins, and breaks away from Catra’s eyes. She takes another slow drink and rests an elbow against the bar, looks around at it all as if to say, as if to ask, _in here? All alone with an eternity of liquor?_

“You barely lasted another minute, huh.” A matching grin begins spreading its way across Catra’s lips at Adora’s distinct lack of answer.

“_Hm._”

“Useless,” Catra says, chuckles, reaches over and scratches at Adora’s knee. “Just like the rest of them.”

“I don’t know, the way I hear it,” Adora whispers thoughtfully. She looks out across the bar again, closes her palm over top of Catra’s like it’s easy, easy, nothing more than instinct to spread that sort of warmth. “I’m something of a hero. Saved the world, won the war.”

“Useless _and_ an ego, look at _you _today, princess_._”

“I’ll have you know I’m incredibly humble.” She squeezes fondly at Catra’s hand. “Maybe the humblest in the world.”

“M_hm_. Any chance I could meet some of these witnesses to your ever so humble heroics?” Catra asks.

“Oh, no. No, no, no. Of course not. I would never put them through such an ordeal.”

“Obviously,” Catra answers.

And Adora finishes, “_Obviously.__”_

A laugh, and a drink, and Catra’s glass is empty once more. She untangles their hands and their fingers. Reaches up to stroke, and brush, and thread through Adora’s hair.

“So,” she starts, smirk still riding the curve of her lips. “Couldn’t do anything without me after all.”

Adora only rolls her eyes, stifling a smile as she says, “I could not,” voice dipping low, low, low, no hesitation at all, and _god_ if Catra doesn’t love this — being able to throw so much mock-indignation and laughter laced exasperation back in Adora’s face like they always stayed friends, like Adora never left, like Catra never stayed, or maybe even like they always had the time and the opportunity to grow that friendship into something more, and like the bottomless chasm between them never existed to grow impassable at all.

And maybe it didn’t, here, in this place.

So, they toast to that. They drink to the truth of their uselessness apart and their uselessness together until the bottle is empty and their cheeks are pink with the buzz of it, until Adora is curled so confidently into Catra’s side that it almost feels like they were made for each other. Hard angles, soft curves, and the steady matching beat of unburdened hearts fitting together like puzzle pieces. They’re gone. They’re here. They did, and they didn’t, and now, finally, they can.

In the end, maybe Catra doesn’t need to know why Adora is here or what this place is. Maybe it’s something. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s the desperate, last-minute hallucination of a heart running on empty for too many years, hoping, pleading, begging to feel something other than hate in the split-second flash before the dark empty black of forever comes to steal her away from the world.

In the end, maybe it does not matter at all.


End file.
